Usually, as readers of www.thecheckoutline.org already know, we deal with the issues of either death — and how it affects us — or terminal illness, and how to deal with that in an intelligent, common sense way.
But the other day, I got contacted by representatives of Dr Erika Schwartz, a highly intelligent (and funny) longtime internist who is also medical director of the insurance company Cinergy Health. Dr. Schwartz used to run a major New York City trauma center where the depressed used to check in quite a lot, as it turns out — and she wanted to talk to readers of this website about a way to prevent a certain kind of death.
Suicide.
Seemed like a reasonable kind of thing to try and prevent.
Why?
“Because a million people worldwide commit suicide every year,” Dr. Schwartz says when we speak. “And the most common way of doing so is by ingesting pesticides — which is usually done by farmers because so many are isolated and have no money.”
Here in the United States, she says, the suicide rate is “relatively low”: by which she means out of every 100,000 deaths, 10.7 are the result of suicide. However — a big however — if you just examine one population group, the suicide statistics here are far, far worse.
“That would be men,” says Dr. Schwartz. “Out of every 100,000 deaths in the US, 17.6 are men who kill themselves.”
So how are we to convince the potentially suicidal not to kill themselves? Especially in this depressing economy when people are losing jobs, incomes, spouses, and self-confidence?
“That’s a problem, because according to the American Association of Suicidology, the jobless are 2 to 4 times more likelly to kill themselves,” Dr. Schwartz concedes. “Yes, believe it or not, there is such an association, and they do call it suicidology…
“But there are two kinds of people in this world, I’ve found: Warrior and Worriers,” she continues. “The Warriors are the ones with positive perspectives. They lose a job, they find solutions. The Worriers, on the other hand, will either verbalize, ‘Woe is me!’ –or they won’t verbalize anything. And then, if they say nothing to anyone, they’re in real trouble!
“So talk to the Worriers — because those who connect are far less likely to kill themselves. Tell them you care about them. Point out to them that even if they lost a job, they are healthy, they are still alive, they have a future. Make them change their perspective.
“Because perspective here,” Dr. Schwartz concludes, “that’s the key to surivival.”
